Outdoors
& REC
The Observer & Baker City Herald
SNOWSTORM
SURPRISE
JAYSON
JACOBY
ON THE TRAIL
W
eather forecasters
don’t get much at-
tention until they’re
wrong.
Immensely wrong.
Which, I suppose, makes me-
teorologists the scientific analog
to football punters.
Fans as a rule don’t care about
their team’s punter unless he
fumbles the snap or his kick is
blocked.
Then the punter becomes the
ideal scapegoat.
(As a University of Oregon
alumnus, I can attest that when
both types of major punting mis-
cues happen in the annual Civil
War game against Oregon State,
as was the case on Nov. 26 when
the Ducks miraculously man-
aged to blow a 21-point lead late
in the third quarter, the punter
quickly moves from obscurity
to the spotlight. In Oregon’s case
the punter was spared, some-
what, by the Ducks botching so
many other plays that the punt-
ing problems didn’t stand out.)
The people who predict
weather enjoy a similar sort of
anonymity so long as their fore-
casts hew relatively close to re-
ality.
Which they do, most of the
time.
Weather Service pegged it at 37,
nobody’s filing a class action
lawsuit to compensate for the
mental anguish of feeling a trifle
colder than expected on an after-
noon walk.
(Actually, somebody probably
has, or will, file such a complaint,
what with our society’s litigious
predilections.)
But occasionally a forecast
Saturday, December 3, 2022
Weather,
forecast
models and a
‘huge miss’
misses so badly — the equivalent
to a punt that goes sideways —
that people are apt to notice.
Such was the case this week
The National Weather Service’s forecast for significant snow in Baker City this week didn’t pan out.
Nobody expects
perfection, obviously — if the
temperature tops out at, say,
35 on a day when the National
B
when the latest in a series of win-
ter storms moved into Oregon.
Initially, the National Weather
Service’s forecast models — there
are several, each of them based
on the calculations of high-pow-
ered computers — were quite
enamored with the potential po-
tency of this tempest. The agen-
cy’s meteorologists rely heavily
on these models, and there was
enough consistency among them
to prompt the Weather Service to
issue a plethora of watches and
warnings.
On Tuesday, it appeared all
but certain that the storm would
at a minimum make for difficult
driving late in the week.
I could anticipate the inev-
itable closure of Interstate 84
through the Blue Mountains,
something that’s more reliable
even than weather forecasts.
The storm, as we know, was
pretty puny by local standards.
I went to bed Wednesday
night, Nov. 30, expecting to be
busy with the snow shovel the
next morning.
But when I woke up on the
first day of December, the tem-
perature was 36 and not a flake
had fallen overnight, so far as I
could tell. The windshield of our
Mazda (we don’t have a garage;
my knuckles have often borne
the wounds from a hasty scrap-
ing job) was ice-free for the first
morning in more than a week.
See Weather / B6
A wintry scene during a previous winter along
Brownlee Reservoir in eastern Baker County.
Contributed Photo, File
Bullheads, and remembering good friends we’ve lost
DENNIS
DAUBLE
THE NATURAL WORLD
I was awakened from deep sleep to
hear of Grandpa Harry’s passing on
a winter dawn so bitter an inch-thick
sheet of ice plated my bedroom win-
dow. The news that Dad died was de-
livered a few weeks short of the lon-
gest night of the year, when raw sleet
pounded frozen pavement. More re-
cently, on a cold, blustery December
evening, a dear friend took his last
breath. I was getting ready for bed when
the phone rang. “Who could be calling
this time at night?” I asked Nancy.
I picked up. “Bad news,” Ken said.
My heart sank and I took a deep breath.
“Duane quit breathing and they took
him to the hospital where he died.”
The news was not unexpected.
Duane had battled amyotrophic lateral
sclerosis, or ALS, a progressive neuro-
degenerative disease that affects nerve
cells in the brain and spinal cord, for
over a year. However, a recent visit sug-
gested he would be around for a long
time. We split a ham-and-cheese on
rye, told jokes via text messaging (he
was hooked up to a respirator at the
time), and watched the 1974 crime-
spree cult classic, “Big Bad Mama.”
Mutual admiration was shared for
the state of nature Angie Dickinson
displayed in her prime. Duane was par-
Dennis Dauble/Contributed Photo
Wayne Heinz show off an eater-size brown bullhead caught while jigging for small-
mouth bass in a backwater of the Columbia River.
ticularly enamored by scenes of gratu-
itous nudity that showcased her nubile
screen daughters.
It is no surprise to those who know
me that my strongest personal connec-
tions transcend to the fishing experi-
ence. Duane and I worked side-by-side
during aquatic monitoring studies of
the Hanford Reach and later on ad-
vanced turbine design for salmon pas-
sage in the Columbia and Snake Rivers.
We backpacked to brook trout in the
Wallowa Mountains, argued politics
(his interest, not mine), and listened to
the blues rock of Hot Tuna and Quick-
silver Messenger Service.
Duane also directed me to my first
steelhead on the Hanford Reach of the
Columbia River. “Ringold is a good
place to start,” he said. “In my humble
opinion though, steelhead are a myth.”
My previous experience fishing for
steelhead had been limited to the Walla
Walla and Rogue rivers, where I tossed
spinners or dragged a worm along
the bottom. Despite Duane’s humble
opinion, I elected to try for steelhead
in the Reach. Approaching a shallow
riffle along the Ringold Springs shore-
line, I saw a steelhead roll. Two casts
of a nightcrawler and “fish on!” Duane
shook his head and scoffed when I told
him about my catch.
Although Duane and I seldom
fished together in later years, he cri-
tiqued most of my fishing stories. “You
need to add more sex,” he would almost
always say.
I have fond memories of a day spent
casting cut bait with him and his dad
in a shallow backwater pond near the
Burbank wildlife refuge. What kind of
fish butts heads and rubs chin whiskers
with a mate during spawning? Makes a
nest burrow in mud banks and hollow
logs? Can taste food with its sides? Has
meat the color of raw beef said “unsur-
passed for gastronomic delight”? If you
guessed squaretail, horn pout, creek
cat, minister, or brown bullhead, then
go to the head of the class.
Bullhead catfish are not native to the
Pacific Northwest. According to “Com-
ing of the Pond Fishes” by Ben Hur
Lampman, the first planting in Wash-
ington State occurred around 1880 in
Cowlitz County’s Silver Lake. Similar
introductions were made to Oregon’s
Yamhill and Willamette Rivers in a
mixed bag of fish transported by rail
from the Midwest. Over the last cen-
tury, bullhead have continued to spread
throughout the Pacific Northwest with
the assistance of misguided anglers.
Bullhead fishing is often described
as a “quiet sport.” I suspect the relax-
ing part of the experience appealed to
Duane. Similar to my older brother,
Daran, Duane preferred to let fish
“come to him.”
I had occasion to catch several brown
bullheads while the shadow of ALS
hung over Duane. Knowing how much
he liked these smooth-bodied, big-
headed, whiskery fish, I delivered one
to his home. Preparing bullhead catfish
for eating is a challenge. You gut them,
make a sharp incision behind the head,
break the backbone and pull the head
back towards the tail to peel the skin
back; all the while avoiding their sharp
spines. The red-meat carcass is rolled in
a mixture of salt, pepper, flour, and corn
meal, and fried in hot oil until crispy.
Duane let his fish cool, picked it up with
his fingers, and nibbled the tender meat
as if it were a juicy chicken thigh.
I think of Grandpa Harry every time
I toss flies for wild rainbow trout. I
think of Dad on days I cast to surfperch
off rugged rock outcrops on the Ore-
gon Coast. Duane enters my thoughts
whenever I catch a spiny bullhead cat-
fish. It’s unlikely this winter’s ice fish-
ing from a nearby reservoir will yield a
bullhead. But if it does, I’ll fry it up and
gnaw on its tender meat like I would
from a chicken bone. That way I will
surely remember Duane more.
█
Dennis Dauble is a retired fishery scientist,
outdoor writer, presenter and educator who
lives in Richland, Washington. For more stories
about fish and fishing in area waters, see
DennisDaubleBooks.com.